Forgiveness
by piloqutinnguaq
Summary: "I think you were wrong when you said that," Hermione told him, "I am never going to forget." Trigger warning. Post-canon.


_Trigger warning. If you are a young person and you have thoughts of suicide, please call Kids Help Phone _1-800-668-6868.

Hermione was livid. She had expected with a masochistic pleasure that she would have a panic attack during the testimonials. Ginny hadn't understood at all when she had announced she was attending the inaugural hearing of the War Reconciliation Committee.

"Aren't the nightmares enough?" she had asked. "It's a good thing they're doing, but why would you want to relive it again?"

Hermione didn't feel as though she was reliving the war. She felt as though the war had never ended. It dragged on into infinity, through all of time and space, and her actions seemed smaller and more insignificant with every minute that passed. Her recognitions and awards sat in a box under her bed, next to the box of death threats.

Draco Malfoy's presentation was eloquent and appropriately solemn. He explained the mission of the ministry hearings and listed the names of victims who would have a chance to air their grievances before the official trials of Voldemort's followers began. Hermione felt empty and that made her furious.

It was quite obvious to her that Malfoy was using the opportunity to clear his own name. She marched up to him after the room was dismissed for the mid-day break. She had every intention to remind him of his crimes—politely.

"Do you think I forgive you?" Hermione asked coolly. Her resolve to be the better woman, the kind of woman who could lead a new generation of wizards, dissolved as Malfoy's eyes were drawn to the scar on her arm. Long dark sleeves covered the scar on his.

"There is no forgiveness," he said. His eyes were a different colour than she remembered, or maybe she'd never noticed before. "People just have short memories."

The rest of the reconciliation committee was filing out of the hearing, parting around them like the red sea in an unintelligible flood of robes and blank faces. Hermione was second in command at the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical creatures, and she knew Draco Malfoy knew that. By no means was her attendance necessary.

"Then what are you doing here?" she pointed at the empty chairs where witnesses were meant to testify about the war and the box where convicted Death Eaters were forced to listen. Malfoy looked around at his creation.

"Making sure they don't forget."

He left without saying goodbye.

* * *

The world didn't end the day Hermione filed for divorce, and she was angry about that too.

There was no moment in that short trip to the Ministry records office that Hermione felt any more alone or helpless than she had for the three years of her marriage. She knew they recognized her, but no one said hello. She hadn't spoken to anyone from the Ministry since she handed in her resignation. Rumours circulated that she couldn't handle running the Hit Wizard division. She tried not to pay too much attention.

It wasn't raining—the summer was unusually dry. It was balmy and breezy. Hermione expected to feel sad as she signed away six years of her life. Nothing came. The sun rose ever higher, smiling down at her.

Ron looked ready to cry when she handed him the papers and gave him a week deadline, like a professor would give an assignment. She promised to move out of their shabby apartment even though she had nowhere to go.

"If this is about the travel, Hermione, I can retire in two years. Harry says he's lining up a good job for me at the Ministry. You know, get back into the swing of things. It'll be just like you wanted."

She had been grateful at some point that Ron had taken to telling her how she felt and what she wanted. It was decisive and Hermione was afraid of admitting she had no idea what she wanted—from her marriage or her career. She followed mechanically along the expected path.

"It's not fair to you," she told him. That was half true. Ron would never understand. "I will always care about you, but I can't lie to myself anymore. You're still young, Ron. It's not the end of the world."

It really wasn't.

To prove it to herself, she took a buss to the middle of nowhere and got piss drunk in a dive bar. It was through the fourth glass of firewhiskey that she saw Draco Malfoy again.

He'd lost all trace of boyhood and if she hadn't known him for more than half her life, Hermione might have passed him over as just another wizard on vacation. His clothes were a little too professional for that.

"Granger," he said, leaning over the barstool as she swayed dangerously, "What are you doing here?"

He'd cut his hair short and he looked nothing like his father.

"What do you think?" she snapped. She craned her neck to look at his hands when he shifted her to a more stable position in the seat. She recalled hearing something about his wedding one of the Greengrass girls in the spring. "You're not wearing a ring."

"Neither are you," Malfoy pointed out. The other patrons in the bar began to give them curious glances. Hermione let him carry her out and pay the hefty tab. She delighted in her dizziness, suddenly feeling giddy.

"I'm a mess," she said, pushing her bushy hair out of her face. "I should go home."

"You can't floo like this and if you even think about apparating, I will stupefy you for your own safety." Malfoy sounded like a scolding parent. Hermione giggled. She hadn't giggled for years.

"It's okay. I don't have a house anymore. Where are _you _staying?"

She followed him to a hotel and pretended not to notice when he paid for a night. Hermione didn't dare attempt the stairs by herself.

"Have you forgotten yet?" she asked as Malfoy put her in bed. He did not need to guess what she was referring to, although it was five years in the past.

"No." He was bittersweet and mostly bitter.

"I think you were wrong when you said that," Hermione told him. "I'm never going to forget."

She woke up alone and she told herself she wasn't disappointed, but her heart felt heavier as she took the long way home.

* * *

Coincidences were a sort of magic, Hermione decided, as Malfoy sat down across from her in one of the laboratories at St. Mungo's. She was halfway through a book on the uses of mistletoe and he had no good reason to be there. It was late and the researchers were long gone.

James was better, anyway. He would be released the following morning and Ginny would make him take his Skele-Grow on time and it would be as though his leg was never broken. Some wounds were so easily healed.

"You were here with Potter's son," Malfoy said instead of hello. "Not yours."

Hermione shook her head. What a backwards way to ask, she thought, if she was back with Ron yet. Ron was playing an away game and he was happy and Hermione was reading about brewing antidotes.

"I don't think I could ever bring a child into this world," Hermione sighed. "It's so full of suffering and hatred. I couldn't do that. Maybe that makes me weak. Could you do it?"

Draco looked away from her and into the fogged window. His own reflection stared back at him and he flinched.

"I did," he said quietly. "I have a daughter. She's six."

"I've never seen her," Hermione protested, as if she could disprove the girl's existence. She hadn't even heard of Malfoy's child. Surely he hadn't been married to the Greengrass girl for that long.

"I don't have custody. I—I gave her up. She lives in France and she will never know me. Her parents write sometimes to tell me how she is."

There was a pregnant pause and Hermione felt as though she should offer some comfort, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She was angry again. Malfoy was caught up in his reflection, a ghost of the past.

"You're not going to be like your father," Hermione said.

"I'm not my father!" Malfoy snapped at the glass instead of her. "He's _dead_!"

Hermione threw her book across the gap between them and it left a mark on the wall. Malfoy swiveled around instantly and Hermione raised herself up in her indignant rage like a snake coiling before a strike.

"Then why are you so damn afraid of him!" she shouted. Malfoy retracted, stance guarded and face cool. His voice did not shake and neither did his hands.

"I came here to visit my mother today. She doesn't remember who I am, but she's afraid of me. She's afraid of him."

Hermione wanted to apologize but the words stuck on her tongue. The room felt icy and she could hear the ghostly moans from the recovery ward down the hall.

"Who are you afraid of, Hermione?" he asked.

She fled, leaving the book behind on the floor. She did not look back as she rushed back to the hotel she had booked. She sat on the floor of the tiny tiled bathroom and waited for her heart to slow down, but it did not. It only quickened as the past stretched out in front of her and she became infinitely small before the great, gaping maw of death.

* * *

Hermione hoped for a moment that Malfoy was dead.

She didn't want him to be dead, but there he was, so she knew that either both of them were dead or neither. He stared back at her, frantically saying something she couldn't hear. She felt her body roll sideways so that she was lying on her back and her head was propped up. The pain was burning and cold and she knew that wasn't how death felt. Harry told her in one of his reflective moods about his experience.

"It doesn't hurt," he had said after she plied him with a beer or two. "It's a bright white light, an empty space, and you see what you want to see. I saw Dumbledore there, you know. He sent me back. I don't know if I could have come back without him."

The words had echoed over and over in her mind as she'd broken into the abandoned Malfoy Manor and lay down on the floor where Bellatrix had tortured her eight years before. The potion hadn't worked as quickly as she'd hoped.

The cobwebs on the ceiling of Malfoy Manor reminded her of the sky in the Great Hall, she thought absently. In the dim light they looked like soft grey clouds. Hands pressed down on her chest. Her lungs lurched suddenly into action and she coughed and gasped for air. Malfoy's voice became a murmur in the background.

Malfoy was sending her back.

"Granger, breathe," he commanded. She instinctively obeyed. As she came into consciousness, she pushed him away clumsily. She was reminded of their last encounter.

"I just want to help you," he said.

Hermione pulled herself up and stood with the aid of one of the tables. She remembered Bellatrix Lestrange standing where Malfoy was sitting. She remembered everything again.

"I don't want your help," she said coolly.

"You always had to be difficult, Granger."

"Why can't you just leave me alone then! Let me die!" she screamed, throwing the table lamp as far as she could. It shattered on the floor in front of his feet. Malfoy stepped over it gingerly but did not make a retreat. He circled around her.

"I told you I don't want your help!" Hermione hissed at him. He ignored her and kicked the bag she'd come with away. It slid across the floor into the corner of the room, empty vials clinking inside.

"Is this your idea of penance? Taking care of me now because you couldn't save me then—your atonement for your father's sins," she demanded, wild with anger, "or do you enjoy it? Are you just like him—you love to see what they did to me? They're all dead but they won."

Malfoy started to cry as he stepped closer to her. As soon as he was in reach she hit him over and over again, her fists as weak as her reasoning. He gathered her up in his arms so that she couldn't hit him anymore. She stilled but remained tensed up and rigid while he sobbed incoherently.

"You drive me mad," he whispered into the crook of her neck. She ran her hand through his hair and she didn't feel like crying. Instead she rested her head against his shoulder until they were both breathing easily.

Hermione counted his heartbeats: one two, one two, one two. She had never been more human.

"I hate that there's no reason," she said eventually. The words poured out of her. "I wanted for it to hurt when I saw them during the hearings, but it didn't. They don't matter. Nothing can hurt me—just my dreams. It only happens when I'm alone. I hate that."

She expected Malfoy to have some kind of response, but he didn't flinch. He continued to hold on to her like an anchor in a storm.

"And you," she continued, "I want to hate you so badly for what you did, but I can't. I forgave you. I said I wouldn't, I know. I hate you now because they don't control you. I hate you because you moved on and you forgot. I can't do that."

Malfoy looked down at her with absolute, unwavering certainty: "Yes, you can."

* * *

Most women had reservations about turning thirty, but Hermione had a certain amount of hope. She hoped that a milestone in her life would give her a new zero on her timeline; a new era free from all the things that had troubled her in her twenties.

It was on her thirtieth birthday that she knew she was in love with Draco Malfoy.

The party was a quiet, drop-in affair and she had a glass too many. Draco was stone cold sober and he paced nervously in between arrivals, as if he didn't expect her friends to accept his invitation. Hermione had been sleeping in his guest room for months while she edited her book for publishing.

"Once the royalties start, then I'll find a place. I have some money saved still," she had promised.

"Of course," he had replied absently.

Harry, Ginny, James, and baby Lily had all arrived on time and stayed for two hours, polite and aloof but reasonably happy. Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom made a short appearance during that time and Lavender had shown up with a card from Ron. Molly and Arthur had sent theirs the day before, a postcard from their long awaited holiday with Charlie. There was tea and little cakes Hermione had insisted on making and the day was a roaring success.

Draco collapsed on the couch beside her when it was finished, the last dust from the floo dissipating.

"Happy birthday," he said. His eyes looked a different colour again. She wondered what he would do if she said _I love you_.

"Thank you," she replied. "For everything."

Malfoy smiled. Caught by a sudden desire, Hermione pulled up his sleeve and put their arms side by side. Her skin looked bronze beside the pallor of his and the two scars were perfect opposites. Hermione had never healed the pale, raised letters: MUDBLOOD. What had once been Malfoy's dark mark was a shapeless hole that stretched out like the emptiness of space.

"We match," she said. She didn't touch him, just his shirt. "Damaged goods."

"You're perfect," Malfoy replied. Hermione didn't have to say _I love you_. He covered up the word with his hand. Hermione laid her hand over his. Everything changed.

They fell asleep together and neither of them was troubled by nightmares. Hermione thought the pain of the war eased away in that moment, as if they had erased the sins of the past in each other, but perhaps she had just forgotten it.


End file.
